Healthcare environments, such as hospitals or clinics, include information systems, such as hospital information systems (HIS), radiology information systems (RIS), clinical information systems (CIS), and cardiovascular information systems (CVIS), and storage systems, such as picture archiving and communication systems (PACS), library information systems (LIS), and electronic medical records (EMR). Information stored can include patient medication orders, medical histories, imaging data, test results, diagnosis information, management information, and/or scheduling information, for example.
Medical exam results stored in, for example, the radiology information system, require review by an examining radiologist. Distribution of the exams for review by the radiologist involves consideration of various factors, including, for example, radiologist workloads, exam characteristics, available resources, and/or hospital efficiency goals. Such considerations are often present across a network of radiologists, hospitals, and/or institutions. Efforts to manage exam distribution in view of institutional work flow goals can be time-consuming, inefficient, and result in inequities with respect to the distribution of the medical exams for review. Further, hospital administrators lack efficient tools for managing radiologist workflows, analyzing metrics associated with the distribution of exams, and dynamically implementing workflow modifications based on the metric analysis.